A procedure for converting logic table conditions into an efficient sequence of test instructions
J. F. Egler · Communications of the ACM · 1963
highly intricate sets of commands, but they do not possess human (or any other) judgment.The writers of monitor systems are generally very skilled programmers of high intelligence.If the monitor systems were as good as the persons writing them, there could be no complaint.But this is not the ease, and cannot be the ease.Instructions carried out big a machine obeying the commands of a monitor program are not and cannot be the equivalent of intelligent operation of the machine by the system designer who wrote the monitor.In all this talk of bigger, better and faster machines, let us not forget the fact that a machine is still just a dumb piece of hardware, obeying a list of specific and largely inflexible instructions.As long as this remains a fact, monitor systems had better remain discreet.